Proceedings op the Farmer^ Club. 415 



Snow frequently fiills, but it seldom remains a week on the 

 ground, more often disappearing in three days. Frost rarely pene- 

 trates over three inches deep, and there are several times each 

 winter when none remains in the ground for two or three weeks. 

 As in other elevated regions remote from the ocean, the contrast 

 between midday and midnight is more noticeable than the contrast 

 , between January and June. During all the early part of June, 

 and for a part of August, a little fire at nightfall and in the morn- 

 ing is agreeable. Yet, the days of January are rare when the mid- 

 day heat is not such as make some indifierent to the closing of a 

 south door, or a window looking toward the sun. There is never 

 a raw and chilly wind, as on the Atlantic seaboard; never a succes- 

 sion of damp, gloomy days when the moist wind, just above freez- 

 ing point, makes a thick overcoat as necessary in Mississippi as in 

 Maine; nor, on the other hand, is a succession of mellow, vernal 

 days, in January or February, succeeded all of a sudden by a north 

 wind which drops the mercury to zero, drives everybody to the 

 fireside, and kills all the peach trees, as so often occurs in Kansas 

 and Nebraska. 



As before stated, this mountain region is not suited, either as to 

 climate or fertility, to the growth of heavy crops. The soil is 

 a light, gravelly loam on the slopes, and of a dark, peaty character 

 in the glades, or small prairies which are interspersed at irregular 

 intervals through the forest. The natural growth is black oak, pin 

 oak and some white oak, a good deal of chestnut, a little hickory, 

 rather more of yellow poplar, some white pine on the banks of the 

 creeks. Close by the water there is an undergrowth of laurel and 

 hazel bushes, but in general the woods are so open that a wagon 

 can be driven anywhere. A tall, wild grass, coarse, but quite 

 nutritious, abounds everywhere. If there were animals enough to 

 graze it down and keep it tender, it would be good all summer. 

 But in August it reaches such an age and size that woody fiber is 

 developed, rather than starch and the juices, and the cattle refuse 

 it if they can find tame grasses. The plateau to which this des- 

 cription applies is, on an average, thirty miles wide and two hundi'ed 

 long. Its surface is not a monotonous level, but undulates, in some 

 parts being cut quite abruptly by percipitous ravines, and in others 

 rising into knobs or swells a hundred feet in height. A consider- 

 able part of the surface is occupied with grassy meadows or glades, 

 nearly destitute of trees, which by proper cultivation could be 

 developed into good meadows — cutting a ton and a half or two tons 



